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Wednesday, August 21, 2013

It Must Be Jelly ‘Cause Jam Don’t Shake Like That: Part 1

Shortly before we were married, my now-husband planted a
Concord grapevine in the back yard. It didn’t produce much other than leaves
for the first few years, but last year it finally taunted us with a few tiny, stunted,
green grapes. This summer, however, the vine came into its own and we
discovered a month or so ago that it was covered with bunches and bunches of
fat grapes.

Over the past couple of weeks, the grapes have turned a
luscious, rich purple and have begun to send a wonderful, sweet, fruity aroma
wafting around the garden. So yesterday morning, I grabbed a basket and a pair
of scissors and harvested our first official batch of grapes.

I have always heard that Concord grapes are quite tart and
full of seeds, so the best way to use them is to make jelly. Although my
grandmother had an extensive garden and a larder that was always chock full of
fruits and vegetables and jellies and jams and preserves that she’d canned
herself, and during my childhood my mother did some canning on occasion as well, canning is a
culinary endeavor I’ve never tried myself. So when I decided to try putting
some Concord grape jelly up in jars, I did what I always do when I try
something new: I asked for advice on Facebook.

My Facebook friends were, as always, more than up to the
task. They sent me recipes, advice, and – possibly most helpful of all – links to
online videos that walk the viewer through the whole process, step by step. One
of the earliest bits of advice I got was not to wait too long between
harvesting the grapes and making the jelly, to avoid attracting fruit flies, so
without further ado, I printed out one of the simpler (and smaller batch) recipes
I had found, glanced at a video or two, and got to work.

The first step seemed pretty easy: strip the stems from
3-1/2 pounds of Concord grapes and wash them. But how does one measure 3-1/2
pounds of grapes? Obviously, with a scale. I don’t have a kitchen scale that
goes up to 3-1/2 pounds, so I went with the only other scale I have in the
house: my bathroom scale. I carefully lugged it downstairs to the kitchen and
placed the basket of grapes on it, figuring I’d weigh the basket afterwards and
subtract. However, there wasn’t enough weight to trigger the electronic scale.
No problem, the heavy stockpot I planned to boil the grapes in must weigh
enough to register, right? Nope. Undaunted by this complication, I took one for
the team and stepped on the scale myself. (Believe me, for any woman over forty
with two children who’s not an athlete or a supermodel, this is a true
sacrifice.) After the initial shock of seeing those numbers, I weighed myself
once more holding the stockpot, and a bit of simple math showed that the pot
weighed exactly four pounds.

Okay, now I was ready to start picking grapes. So I picked.
And I picked. And I picked. And I weighed. One pound. Only ONE pound? I felt
like I must have cleaned about eight pounds by that point. So I picked some
more. And some more. And I weighed again. And on and on, until it seemed like I’d
been picking grapes for the better part of the day (it had actually been about
45 minutes). But I finally got the scale up to 3-1/2 pounds of grapes (which
was, quite conveniently, exactly the amount of grapes I had picked), and I was
ready to move on to Step 2: Mashing and Boiling.

Little did I know how satisfying it is to mash grapes! With
those firm skins, I expected a nice “pop” reminiscent of bubble wrap with each application
of my potato masher (real canners probably have a better tool, but for my
purposes, the masher worked just fine), but instead I got a loud, juicy,
satisfying “SQUELCH!!” And the more I mashed, the squelchier it got. In direct
opposition to the picking part of the process, I felt like I’d only been
mashing for a few seconds when I glanced at the clock and realized it had been a full 20 minutes. My grapes were now a juicy, pulpy, seedy, green-and-purple sludge,
so I stirred in a bit more water and set the pot on the stove to boil. Checking
it a few minutes later, the juice was boiling merrily, stirring up a foamy
froth and releasing even more of the grapes’ rich, fruity, sweet-tart aroma.
After ten minutes, I turned off the heat and got ready for Step 3: Straining.

Carefully balancing the metal strainer over the largest
mixing bowl I had, I poured out the steaming sludge. Rivers of a pinkish-purple
liquid ran into the bowl, releasing steam as it poured. With the help of a big
plastic spoon, I mushed and mashed the sludge against the bottom of the
strainer to get out every last drop of juice. Smearing and squishing like I was
spreading peanut butter, I finally satisfied myself that I had extracted every
bit of juice that I was going to get.

And then came the hardest step of all: Waiting. I had to
leave this bowl of gorgeous nectar overnight to cool, so that my jelly, once
made, wouldn’t form crystals. And I’m sorry to say, that means that you, my
reader, will also have to wait until tomorrow for the next installment of my
jelly-making saga…